Transcript for Malala Yousafzai, 16, and Her Miraculous Story of Surviving Being Shot by the Taliban

Finally tonight, our person of the week. There was another name on the short list for the nobel peace prize today. Malala. 16 years old. The youngest nominee. She was shot, because she spoke up for the 31 million girls around the world, who cannot get an education. Her new book is, I am malala. And tonight, the miracles, the reason she survived that bullet from the taliban. Two men approach a school bus like this one, men with beards and a gun, a colt 45. One of them climbs on the bus and asks a question. Who is malala? She doesn't remember what happened next. Her friend describes the moment. He fired two bullets, one hit you on the left side of my head. I would have been doing like this. So I hide my face, because there was gunpowder on my fingers. She is bleeding in grave condition. But two hours pass before a helicopter can deliver her from the local hospital to her military surgeon. He spends five hours trying to relieve the swelling on her brain, and remove tiny clots. By a strange coincidence, there is someone in pakistan for the first time, a top specialist in pediatric trauma from england, dr. Reynolds with her colleague. They have been sitting in long governmental meetings on medical problems when suddenly dr. Reynolds is told to race out and try to save the life of a famous and dying child. The tubes have given malala an infection, the machines are improperly set. Her blood isn't clotting. Her lungs and kidneys begin to fail. She had become septic. It was obvious she had a life threatening infection. Dr. Reynolds makes a risky recommendation take the ill girl on an eight hour trip to a high tech hospital in england. From another muslim country comes a life giving offer. Sends one of his royal planes outfitted as a hospital, state of the art intensive care unit. And for the entire eight hour flight to england, dr. Reynolds keeps malala alive breath by breath, organ by organ. They also have noticed something else that defies possibility. The bullet took a path, that simply cannot be believed. The chances of being shot at point blank range to the head and that happening, I don't know. But it's truly amazing. I don't know why she survived. Maybe his hand was shaky. He hit her there. It goes under the skin near the skull. A bullet traveling 1,000 feet per second slips under malala's skin but as it heads toward her brain, that bone turns out to be so strong and curved, it forces the bullet to ricochet away and instead smashes her eardrum, severs the nerve in her face and hits her shoulder. The fact she didn't die on the spot or soon afterwards, to my mind is nothing short of miraculous. Miracle? If you believe in miracles, yes. Absolutely. Maybe. Hit the bone and not the brain, god saved me. Doctors have no idea if she'll ever walk or see or be able to speak again. They are amazed when moments after her eyes open, she uses a letter board to spell out in english the words country and then father. Ahead of her, three months of punishing therapy, more surgery to reconnect the nerve in her face. Through it all, dr. Reynolds notes of her young patient. I have never seen her cry. Never. Show is incredibly stoic, she had to have sutures in her scalp, she also had to have a needle to drain an infected fluid from her neck. On both occasions, she didn't wince, she didn't cry. She didn't even squeeze my hand. I didn't cry, because i changed after that incident. I don't know what happened to me. Who can do this? We all cry. I was feeling, that this is a new life. Malala thinks death just wasn't ready for her. I think death didn't want to kill me. And god was with me. And the people prayed for me. And so we choose malala yousafzai, thank you for

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